San Angelo Central junior John Isiah Morales qualified for the 6A UIL state cross country on Monday at the Region I meet at Mae Simmons Park in Lubbock.
Morles finished 17th overall out of a total of 184 qualifiers with a time of 15-minutes and 48-seconds on the 5,000-meter course.
The top four teams and top 10 runners not on qualifying teams punched their ticket to the state meet Nov. 6 at Old Settlers Park in Round Rock.
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The Bobcats team finished fifth in the standings with 170 points, which was 16 points outside of qualifying for the state meet.
El Paso Eastwood won the meet with 48 points, followed by Southlake Carroll with 53, Keller with 113 and Flower Mound with 154.
Aiden Garcia was the next highest finished for the Central boys team coming in 28th with a time of 16:00. Sebastian Gonzalez (32nd, 16:10), Jack Zwiebel (35th, 16:13), Landon Kauten (85th, 16:48), Alexander Hunter (113th, 17:19) and Luke Lozano (122nd, 17:24) were the other runners for Central.
There were also two competitors for the Central girls team with Emma-Clarie Beers finishing 110th with a 20:44 and Miley Ragan was 141st with a time of 21:30.6.
Paul Witwer covers high school sports and Angelo State University sports for The San Angelo Standard-Times. Reach him at sports@gosanangelo.com. Follow him on X @Paul_Witwer, Instagram and TikTok at pwitwer_sast.
This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: Morales punches ticket to state cross country meet